Aclu Files Lawsuit Against City, State To End Punch Card Ballots

Claiming the voting system in Illinois discriminates against minorities, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday seeking to end punch card ballots in the state.

The suit, which the ACLU filed on behalf of three African-American voters in Chicago, came in response to reports that voters in black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the city and suburban Cook County failed to cast a valid vote for president in November in greater numbers than voters in the rest of the state.

"We would like to see the end of the punch card system and the use of a uniform system that allows all voters to make sure that their votes are counted," said Edwin Yohnka, an ACLU spokesman.

Most cities and counties in Illinois, including Chicago and Cook County, use punch card voting systems, which can be programmed to reject improperly marked ballots and give voters a second chance. However, a quirk in state law forbids use of that feature on the punch card systems.

But the law allows the second-chance feature in the handful of jurisdictions that have switched to more sophisticated optical scan systems, in which voters mark special paper ballots and then feed them into readers that tabulate the votes.

The suit, filed against the State Board of Elections and the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, claims the discrepancy in state law treats voters "unequally."

A Tribune analysis of results from the November election found that in some Chicago wards with many minority residents, more than 12 percent of ballots cast did not include a countable vote for president. In those cases, the voters had either failed to mark a choice for president or marked more than one choice.

The ACLU suit charged that the so-called undervote was less than 1 percent in jurisdictions where optical scan machines were programmed to give voters a second chance. For the rest of the state, it was 4 percent, while in Chicago, it was 7 percent, the suit alleged.

Such voting problems became a national issue for voters when the election standoff in Florida between President-elect George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore focused on the balloting snafus there.

"I'm a little annoyed that there was such a significant undervote in Chicago," said Vinni Hall, a member of the ACLU of Illinois board. Hall is a former associate professor of special education at Chicago State University and one of the three African-Americans linked to the lawsuit.

The two others are longtime community activist Timuel Black and Cleo Wilson, executive director of the Playboy Foundation and also an ACLU board member.

The punch card systems in both the city and suburban Cook County already are equipped with the devices that will allow them to scan ballots for errors. State and local election officials say they have tried without success to win permission from the legislature to switch on the feature.

"Given what happened in the last election, I would think that [state legislators] are going to look at the issue much more closely," said Ron Michaelson, executive director of the State Board of Elections.

The state board has previously supported efforts in the legislature to let Chicago and Cook County use the error-scanning devices. So, too, has the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, said Tom Leach, a spokesman for the city agency.

"The lawsuit is seeking the same thing that we have been asking [from] the legislature for the last two years," Leach said.

Bennett J. Johnson, Illinois political action chairman for the NAACP, said voting troubles in Illinois--a state that went solidly for Gore--were far less important this time around than those in Florida, which handed Bush the presidency.

But he said efforts to make sure all votes in Cook County are counted could have a decisive effect on future political races.

"If nothing comes out of this thing in Florida except that people look to improve the electoral system--that's good," he said.